Washington D.C. – Washington Post, Sept. 17, 2026
China should free 100 prisoners of conscience — including our relatives.
Grace Jin Drexel is the daughter of Pastor Ezra Jin, who was recently released from prison. Rayhan Asat is the sister of Ekpar Asat, a detained Uyghur tech entrepreneur. Sophie Luo is the wife of detained human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi.
Every state visit comes with gifts. When President Xi Jinping arrives at the White House on Sept. 24 — the first state visit by a Chinese leader in more than a decade — Beijing will bring the usual: purchase orders, pandas and promises.
We write as families in America with loved ones wrongfully detained in Chinese prisons to propose something cheaper and more valuable: Before Xi boards the plane, President Donald Trump should ask him to free 100 prisoners of conscience.
Call it the “Big, Beautiful Release.”
Joseph Stalin purportedly once remarked that one death is a tragedy, but a million a statistic. A hundred people is nothing to a state of over a billion, but to their families it is a hundred tragedies undone — a hundred miracles.
